Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

And then we'll go into presentations. We'll have a couple proclamations. We do have tonight the, oh, sorry, roll call. It's been a while. It's been like three weeks.

Commissioner Davis. Here. Commissioner Dollison. Here. Commissioner Bergson. Here. Mayor Pro Tem Mercer. Here. And Mayor Yates.

Here. As I was saying, tonight we'll have agenda review only of the strategic plan presentation of economic stability. You want to do that at the end? Please.

No developments of note.

We've got one, two, three, four sets of minutes from July. Any questions or comments on the minutes? all read the mayor's statement which is uh... in relation to uh... term notices i believe and then we've got ordinances first reading adopting military and uh... city manager you are certainly so uh...

As you know, statutes require the cities to establish annually a millage rate for taxation required for public hearings. We have built the fiscal year 27 budget based upon maintaining the city's present millage rate of 6.5900 mills. That was endorsed and approved or agreed to by the commission in July during our budget workshop. The property appraiser then used that information to prepare trim notices which were distributed in August. You all should have received one of those as every property owner in the city would have. You have to establish your millage rate by ordinance, which requires two readings. Obviously, we can't conflict with any of the similar meetings held by the school district or Polk County Board of County Commissioners because our residents also pay those. So we had to move our meeting for next week to Tuesday, September 15th. And the millage at 6.5900 will generate $32,753,796 to the general fund at a collection rate of 96.5%. So that is the item that will stand before you. You will vote on this Monday or Tuesday evening. And just as a reminder, when it comes to the ordinance itself, the attorney will read that in full. We'll point out that that millage rate of 6.5900 mills is just over a half of a percent, 0.51% above the rollback rate of 6.5567 mills. So I'll stand for any questions you may have on that one.

Commission? Yes, sir. This may be more appropriate for after we talk about the next item with the budget, but as I had been reviewing the budget, I saw that we were above our 30% recommended fund balance and reserves. So we already had a conversation earlier today, me and the city manager, I would like to request if you could maybe bring back some numbers if we were to go to the rollback rate as opposed to the 6.59 mils, what that would look like, if that would be feasible, maybe take a little bit less of the extra reserves in favor of offering our taxpayers the rollback rate as opposed to the 6.59.

If you give me just one moment, I can do exactly that. I've just got to find the correct slide within my packet for my presentation on Monday or Tuesday.

While you're doing that, the city attorney, what would that logistically look like? Would that be like an amendment to the ordinance? Okay, okay.

Okay, so Mr. Reeder, our CFO, can weigh in should I get off track here. The fund balance is projected to represent 35%. of the general fund. Your requirement by ordinance that you established by policy, sorry, by commission policy is no less than 17%. You have, a few years back, set a target goal of 30%, which is more in line of what best practices would be in financial matters. Along with that goal, The Commission was of consensus that anything above the 30% I would bring back to you for appropriation of those excess dollars to go towards capital projects, one-time purchases, basically to deal with contingencies or the ability to expand or further enhance a capital project. The additional 5% above the 30% is projected at $4,560,772. We have included in the budget an appropriation of $1.5 million of that reserve excess towards the Sertoma Park project, which would leave you with a balance of approximately $3 million. Our recommendation at the time of the budget presentation in July was don't allocate that or appropriate that just yet. Let's get through year-end closeouts. Let's see where we end with our self-insurance fund, et cetera, and come back. Sometime in early spring with you know some recommendations on what you might want to do with those extra dollars to appropriate them towards particular capital the Other question you had Commissioner Davis was what's the impact or what's the difference? to the general fund in terms of Rollback rate versus the proposed millage rate so Keep in mind your rollback rate is based upon your existing taxable values, but does not apply to growth. So when you go rollback, you still get to account for new properties, new growth that has come into your city. Our calculation is that the revenue difference between the tentative millage rate as proposed in the rollback rate is $165,509 to the general fund. So if you went to the rollback rate, that's what we would lose in admirable home revenues. Does that answer your question?

And I'll save, as far as argument or anything, for my colleagues until Tuesday when we hear this, but what I'm hearing from that is that if we were to go to the rollback rate, we would still be able to do all of the above. So that's why I'm asking if we could consider that as an amendment, and if you can have something prepared for us to discuss and deliberate, and we can wait until Tuesday to have that conversation.

I mean, I think this is a good time for that discussion, perhaps, by the commission, if you're inclined to have that conversation.

Let me interrupt for one second. I think one of the key pieces with this is the mayor's statement. I see. Because if you are inclined to change your millage from 6.5900 to 6.5567... the language of the mayor's statement that is that first thing that is read will also have to change and that's that's not a major issue and it's certainly something that could be changed if there was a favorable vote for that going into the second meeting but if you can do it ahead of your first meeting if there's consensus i mean if you picture the idea that

what you're doing on Tuesday, September 15th, is you are voting on a tentative millage rate, essentially, and a tentative budget, because it's the first reading of each of those matters. And the law requires that you adopt a tentative millage, and then you adopt a tentative budget. And in fact, that's what the trim notice, that was sent out by the property appraiser advises the citizens, you had to determine at that July meeting, the city manager referenced that, when are we gonna have our first public hearing on the tentative budget? That's gonna be Tuesday, September 15th at six o'clock. What's our maximum millage rate that we're gonna charge? It's 6.5900 mills. That's what you all just determined, and that's what was sent out, and the numbers were computed based on that information. So fast forward to tonight, September 9th, You could, if a consensus, and you're not taking action tonight, but if there was a consensus of the commission that you would prefer to go with the rollback rate of 6.5567 instead of 6.5900 mills, we could prepare an ordinance and upload that to the Granicus agenda platform that accomplishes that objective. My general understanding is that that would not be considered a tax increase. So there would be certain advertising differences. I'm looking at the finance director. I think he and I have had a discussion. That would involve certain advertising differences between first and second reading. So we still have to advertise for the second reading, which we haven't done yet. I don't believe that the titles of either of these ordinances change or mention any specificity as it relates to the amounts. But what I'm And so from the city clerk's perspective, she also advertises the ordinances like she does any other ordinance and puts that 10-day notice in prior to the September 28th final adoption. So we're covered with belt and suspenders as far as that goes from an advertising perspective. But what I would suggest is that if... the commission had consensus tonight to do that, then let's have that conversation or discussion, I think, if you want to. And then we can, we the city staff and working with city manager, we can adjust at least ordinance 02622 accordingly. What I'm hearing the city manager suggest is that the number that you would appropriate in the budget for Ordinance 02623 may not change, even if you went with the rollback rate. In other words, that $165,509 in less revenue would be supplanted, if you will, by the fund balance that's over the percentage that's within that 35% or 5% number. So you would still be appropriating, and the city manager, as he's indicated, would likely appropriate that to non-recurring funds. I assume that that would be your goal, to present back to the commission. So that really probably – I don't know that the budget document itself would change, and I'm sort of looking around to see if that is an accurate – I don't want to say – I think it would change in terms of the details of what the revenue estimates were for ad valorem versus – and that would go down slightly –

and be offset by showing an increase in the transfer from the general fund balance of an equal amount.

That is correct on the general fund. The CRA also has a component of this that would be affected. So the downtown CRA would reduce the ad valorem expected by $10,650. And the Florence Villa CRA would be reduced by $4,074. Based on the way that those budgets have been presented to you, they are using all of their fund balance as part of the compliance effort that they have as a CRA. And so those would actually be a reduction of expenses to offset those revenues, which would slightly reduce the overall budget of the city by about $15,000.

Okay. So then what would be the appropriate, in your view, and we're just discussing and let the commission then make, you know, if the commission were of the mind that we would like to have an ordinance presented to us that establishes a tentative millage rate at 6.5567 mills on Tuesday, September 15th, and a companion budget, tentative budget, could that be done between now and Tuesday in order to make sure that when we do the adopted tentative millage and tentative budget that those jive?

Yes, we would be able to prepare that between now and Tuesday and have it included in our agenda system.

Okay. So, I mean, you know, at this point, the trim notice that the property appraiser sent out has advised all the taxpayers of the citizens of Winter Haven that you're going to have a public hearing on Tuesday, September 15th at 6 o'clock p.m. to consider a tentative budget. It's advised the taxpayers that you had considered a maximum millage levy of 6.5900 mills. But Tuesday is the night of action. So if you're of the view that you would prefer to go with the 6.5567 mils by way of consensus tonight, if you're prepared to do that, then fine. If not, and you're really not willing to do that until Tuesday, that's fine too, because we can do that procedurally. It's up to you all.

Can you say what that amount was again? $165,509.

Does that include the CRA? That is just in the general fund, Mayor. Plus 10 and plus 4. Downtown CRA would be a reduction of $10,650. Florence Villa CRA District would be a reduction of $4,074.

And then I will tell you, as I have advised you I think before, that if you were to decide to stay with the proposed millage rate of 6.5900 mills, you will need to have four votes in order to do that under the new law. that went into effect in this last legislative session. It's no longer just a simple majority for that millage rate like it used to be. So, you know, this is really an important item as you all well know. And so if there is, you know, we're here to adapt and adjust however you all as the governing body think it's appropriate to do so. try to give you as much flexibility as you wish. So.

I guess my, I mean, just, you'd think it'd be more than that. So, I mean, that certainly doesn't seem like very much. And I'm certainly all for the consideration of reducing it. I wish it could be a larger impact. But I think also with the looming possibility of Amendment 3, you don't know what's on the potential horizon. And if that were to pass, I guess my thought would be, OK, well, what is the millage rate going to look like? What are those discussions going to be a year from now in the grand scheme of things? sixty five thousand dollars isn't isn't swinging it a huge one way or the other i'm not sure what and you know obviously there'll be some impact to to homeowners but not very much i mean on 165 000 and i mean if it were me you know if we didn't have amendment three looming i i'd look to to make larger cuts in this to to try to start to work our millage rate down, but I guess what my point is, I just don't know what the future holds in trying to make this decision. That's my concern.

Mayor Fritz and Mercer? Are we still required to just spend 95% of our budget with the 5% because you don't collect all of the taxes?

Defer to mr. Reeder on how we become of the ninety six point five percent Calculation yes, so Florida requires the state of Florida requires as part of the trim process that the government is only allowed to Budget as low as the five percent discount over the total amount of avalorum that could be collected due to the fact that there is a portion of that which is uncollectable every year.

Right. Do we know what that is? Are we assuming that this would be 100%? Historically, we are running around the 96 to 97% collectability.

I guess one of the questions that I had following up Commissioner or Mayor Pro Tem Mercer has said is, is the budget that's presented, that is the next ordinance, is that number calculated based on what Mayor Pro Tem Mercer said, and that is 96.5% collection rate. So you're leaving something on the table, potentially. In other words, it could turn out that we have a 98% collection rate. I don't know. We haven't. It doesn't look like historically had, what is it, 97%? Is that? No.

The maximum is almost 97% on the collectability through the tax collector.

Let me ask it a different way. The 96.5% generates a number. Correct. Let's just say it's $30 million. Of that $30 million, do we collect 100% of the $30 million? Yes. So I think that's the answer to the question. We budget... to collect 96.5% of the taxes that are applied, and that number locks in, and we hit 100% of that collection. So you are getting the full amount of the 96.5.

But that is not the, but you're correct, Mayor Fletcher. Taxing authorities have to. Have to do that, yeah.

Just say for this year, if it was 94%, You never know. I mean, you're trying to do that, but it could be 94%. $165,000 wouldn't make up that difference. That's one percentage.

That is a salient observation. Mayor Yates, back to your question about you thought it would be a bigger number. When we reported this, and I sent this out in an email to the group last week, because our original calculation that we did several weeks prior had that number significantly higher. We went back and double-checked that calculation and backed out that growth factor. And I believe, Mr. Reeder, you spoke directly with Department of Revenue staff on that to verify our number?

That is correct.

So we're confident in that number of 165,000. If you choose to go to your rollback rate, I can tell you my recommendation will be that the budget stay as it is because those are the things that we've identified as what's needed to provide the services to the citizens. we would simply make up that lost revenue via an increase in the transfer from the general fund fund balance of that amount, and that would be basically applied to one-time expenses, nothing that's recurring.

And what was the dollar amount that was over our threshold?

We anticipate it to be $4.5 million. You've already identified a million and a half of that towards a capital project.

Is that the pickleball?

No, that's the Sertoma Park.

That's Sertoma.

And so there's a balance of about $3 million there. Again, not knowing what lies on the horizon, we've got a lawsuit that we're engaged in right now. We're watching closely our self-insurance fund and some high-dollar claims that may come in there. My recommendation would be if you wanted to go to your rollback, I can make that happen through those dollars, but I would not... appropriate the full three million of that out knowing that we have expenses that are going to be coming forward that we don't we can't put a finger on at this point what was the pickleball fallen under that's going to come out of impact fees for parks and recreation because it's an expansion of existing or expansion of new facilities for parks and recreation and those fees can only be used for that purpose only go towards increased or expanded services

Well, I just, I'm, I think we need to go with that alarm rate that we had established.

6.599 or 6.59? Absolutely.

That would be my vote.

That would be mine too.

we don't consensus we will proceed as it has been presented what was your thoughts with the 6.599 6.590 I guess I'm on the fence I will tell you.

But it's not going to give one, it's not going to give a majority one way or the other, my thought.

Well, in order to go with 6.5900 mills, you've got to have four votes.

I mean, well, I get, yeah. So I haven't even made an argument yet. So we have a lot of money in reserves, even above the higher threshold that we've already set by policy. And we're trying to tell the voters that Home Rule says we can make those decisions best for your dollars. We hear you. Your taxes have gone up year after year. Your property values have gone up. Besides all the noise about Amendment 3 and the politics of it all, people are still clamoring for that. And we have an opportunity here that would not affect our budget. It would not even affect our excess. We still have $3 million there. to be able to tell the taxpayers, this year we're not going to raise your taxes. And you don't even, I mean, the state's already decided that in order for us to go with the, to keep our millets the same, we would need four votes. To them, it's that significant. So to me, it's a very easy decision. And I can tell you, you will have a 4-1 at least on this decision on Tuesday.

I know we don't know this number. You probably don't have this right off the top of your head, but how many taxable properties are in the city limits of Winter Haven? Mr. Lahabi? You'll really impress me if you give me the exact number.

27,053 parcels. Are you serious? 27,053 parcels. You're the man. Whoa.

Well, I thought that statute that I memorized was really good. This out does that.

Don't be impressed. It was in my City U presentation last night.

I'm still impressed, Mr. Labby. $27,053.

So that's $6.11 per property. That's what I'm struggling with.

And I'm with you, Mayor. I would love to cut even more and make a bigger, more significant break for the taxpayers. I think that's a conversation for after November. But for sure, if Amendment 3 does not pass, then we'll be having that conversation along with our fire assessment study. They'll come in. I think there will be room there to play around with that as well to be able to discuss a restructure of how we do things.

This four thing really throws a wrench into things, doesn't it? I mean, I wouldn't say that I would vote no just over $6.11 a house for the year for property. What were you going to say? Were you going to say something else?

We don't have consensus, so we can pick this up again on Tuesday. No, no, it'll be presented to you. And the legislative process is messy. I get it. You know, I hate to bring it at the last minute, but at the same time, we have new numbers now, and that's what I noticed when I was looking through the budget, which raised the question to begin with. You know, that's just how it goes. This is the process, and we'll go through it on Tuesday and see what happens.

But, Mayor, I will say that we will have you read the mayor's statement. We'll go through as the city manager has articulated this ordinance. I'll read it in its entirety. And we can then procedurally, you know, move forward. I'll help and counsel as may be needed. But bottom line is we need four votes yes. in order to adopt a millage rate this year of 6.5. Yeah.

And the way that math works is probably less than six bucks a property real realistically. So that, I mean, you're, I wasn't thinking that, and this is part of, you know, sunshine. We can't, we can't have discussions going into this meeting. So I had no clue that this was going to get presented tonight. Um, so it's hard to like, just give you a quick, quick one way or the other on this one. And the six bucks is just, I mean, We've got a lot bigger fish that we're about to start frying. So that's why I'm not on it. All right. Adopting the budget.

Yes, sir. I will do a budget presentation reduced form, call it budget light, for Tuesday night because we presented the budget multiple times over the summer. I'll tell you that the budget that will be presented for your consideration and approval for fiscal year 27 is $377,543,776. That does include approximately $179.8 million in capital investments. As we've discussed, the vast majority of those live within the utility fund, the water department. In terms of the general fund, we have a proposed budget of $86,103,602. uh... that is compared to current year the fiscal year twenty six budget about seventy nine point six i will go through will further detail on the budget overall the budget is you're going to see tuesday evening and it's online or or documents like it is higher than what we presented in july i think in july That number was somewhere around 371 million, if I'm not mistaken. Bear with me one second, and I'll give you the exact number. Yes, 371.8. The reason that there's an increase from July to now of about $6 million is that there is money that was budgeted to be expended in fiscal year 26 for projects that did not reach that point. And so those projects carry forward, and the revenues to support them also carry forward. Some things that were scheduled to get done this year didn't get done. They could carry into 27 and grant dollars or fund dollars and CRAs and the like go with that. So there's not an increase in taxes. There's not higher fees. It is just carrying forward projects.

Questions?

Questions?

I don't have a question, but I do want to just take the opportunity to thank our staff for the budget you presented. There's a lot of rhetoric out there about wasteful spending at the city level, and I don't believe this budget has waste in it, and not at all to the levels that they're accusing us of. I think it's a very lean budget, very responsible, and I really appreciate all the work you put into it.

Thank you, sir. All right. Any other questions or comments? We'll move right along to their second reading which is compensation of city commissioners and mayor

No changes to this. Again, this would increase the rates, the annual compensation collective for the commissioners to $24,180 for each of the commissioners and the mayor to $28,053.96. We have budgeted within the fiscal year 27 budget a 3% cost of living adjustment. So if this were to pass, it is in lieu of that 3% cost of living that's consistent with what we did with all of our other employees. in the delta between what was included in the budget and what the impact of this would be, would be an additional $31,026.60, and we will work to accommodate that within the budget should it be approved.

Commissioners?

Sorry again. So on this issue, I've been doing some thinking about How we got here, it's been so many years since the commission has touched this, and I believe based on public comments I've heard from commissioners prior to me joining, that this has been an idea that's been tossed around. It's just not something that commissioners have wanted to touch, which is why I don't mind bringing it now and pushing it through. But with that being said, in thinking about future commissions and whether or not they'd want to have to do this again, I have some ideas. I'm not going to bring them up now. I like where we're at now, and I'm going to leave it be. But at some point in the future, I've been tossing around some ideas of how we can index this where we change how it's calculated and it's done on a regular, if not annual, basis. Maybe every few years it gets recalibrated based on the per capita rate of you know an index of of the certain number of municipalities in order to uh... to save this from a future commission having to bring it back again uh... you know if future commissions do ever they want but my thought process is that you know this is also a point of view reflects the work we're doing but also reflects the fact that were the second largest city in polk county uh... you know our commission should the compensation should not be in the fourth, fifth, sixth or however, you know, where some of these cities that have way less population and way less workload are coming in at a higher rate. Something that could tie it so that it's something that's done automatically. I'll share some of those ideas later on. We're not going to talk about it now or really in the very near future. But I am tossing around with some ideas that I may propose at a later date.

All right. Well, my thoughts and opinions haven't changed on this one, so with nothing else, commissioners, we'll move right on into the next one, which is the airport obstruction clearing.

So we've got a lengthy consent agenda this evening, and I'm going to ask my staff to present on their respective items. So Mr. Heidel from the airport will present the site.

Yes, thank you, sir. Good evening, Mayor, Commissioners. So on June 10th, 2026, the city, we issued an invitation to bid 2636. This was for the obstruction clearing project at the Winter Haven Airport. A public bid opening was held on July 17th, 26th. with eight proposals received. J.T. Rubin contracting out of Lake Butler was the lowest responsive and responsible bidder, meeting all the requirements for construction of the project. A recommendation of award was posted on August 10th with no protest received. I'd like to just, you know, this was a rebid project. The initial bid, we received two bids. Only one was a responsible bidder. And with DOT grant projects, they'd like to see two responsible bids. This project addresses the vegetation obstructions within the approach and departure surface of Runway 5. This is an area we currently maintain on an annual basis. This mitigation would help kind of keep it cut back for many years to come and help us cut back on some of the annual maintenance costs. The total construction cost of this is $887,480, which is 80% funded through the Florida Department of Transportation. The shitty share is 20%, or $177,496. Staff recommends that the City Commission award ITB 2636 for the obstruction clearing project to J.T. Ruby Contracting and authorize the City Manager or his designee to take all necessary action. I'd like to just point out, when reading this, it kind of reads like an $800,000 tree trimming project. So just some of the high points of the overall cost here. $95,000 of that is for wetland mitigation. and clearing, another $78,000 for clearing and growing of non-wetland, raising the ground elevations, another $98,000, with a chain link fence with maintenance pad is $180,000, and a retaining wall going in at $225,000.

Your next item, Mr. Heidel will present this as well. This is actually a pretty good news item regarding our FAA grant for the T-Hanger taxi lanes.

So bear with me. There's a lot of changes and updates to this project. So on June 9th, 2025, the city commission approved resolution 2527, authorizing a public transportation agreement with the Florida Department of Transportation. FOR THE REHABILITATION OF THE TEAHANGER TAXI LANES AT THE WINTERHAVEN REGIONAL AIRPORT. THIS GRANT PROVIDED FUNDING FOR THE DESIGN PORTION ONLY. ON APRIL 27, 26, THE CITY COMMISSION APPROVED AMENDMENT NUMBER ONE TO THE FDOT GRANT WHICH ADDED THE CONSTRUCTION FUNDS TO THE PORTION OF THE PROJECT. THE PROJECT ADDRESSES THE DETERIORATION CONDITION OF THE TEAHANGER TAXI LANES ON THE SOUTH QUADRANT OF THE AIRFIELD. These pavements are critical for safe and efficient access to the aircraft storage area. These pavements have been considerably degraded over the years, with FDOT's statewide airfield pavement management program has rated those at a pavement and condition index of 49, which is classified as poor. This project has also experienced a change in scope. When originally presented, the project did not include the concrete drives connecting the taxi lanes to the hangars due to uncertainty on whether the Federal Aviation Administration would fund those because they're not a factor in the Pavement Condition Index. It's been since then the FAA has agreed to pay for the concrete connector drives, so therefore there's been an increased scope of the project. Acceptance of this Federal Aviation Grant uh... with the FAA which shares the total design portion of the project with the FAA's construction funding anticipated in early twenty seven staff received this grant on august twenty first and the deadline preceded this next available commission meeting therefore is executed prior to that meeting the new total project costs reflecting the increase scope is four million four hundred eighty nine thousand two hundred twenty eight dollars for the design and construction It was originally anticipated that the FAA would fund 90% of the project. However, the FAA has since increased its portion to 95%, resulting in an FAA share of $4,264,767. FDOT and the city will provide 2.5% of the project, totaling $112,230 per agency. Now originally when we bought this to you, the city share was going to be $138,000. So with the increase of scope, we're pretty much paying less for more. This federal aviation grant offers for $228,000, which represents the FAA's share for the design portion. Staff recommends the City Commission retroactively approve this FAA infrastructure grant and ratify and authorize the City Manager or his designee to execute the subject grant agreement.

So again, just in a nutshell, FAA came back and said we're going to expand the scope and we're going to increase our funding percentage towards the project. So we're getting more project and in concert with that, we're actually going to spend less money.

Almost unbelievable.

cherry on the top, can we get them to throw in a hanger?

Not yet, but hopefully soon grant dollars will be available that we can pursue for that. For multiple hangers. I'll take the next few of these. So we've got some travel and training coming up to be approved. Mayor Yates will be traveling to the FRA conference in Port Charlotte October 21st through the 23rd. So there's a request for that authorization. Commissioner Davis, this is item 12D. Commissioner Davis will be attending the Florida League of Cities Institute of Elected Municipal Officers or Officials. That is actually coming up this month, September 17th and 19th. It will be in Tampa. It's a great program, and I'm sure you'll learn quite a bit about local government to add to what you already have as a knowledge base. And then 12E is for your Florida League of Cities legislative policy committee meetings. You all serve on various committees with the Florida League. So you have meetings in Orlando October 9th, November 13th, and December 3rd. So this is the authorization for your travel for that, as well as mine for the December 3rd legislative conference they do. Item 12F, Mr. Carnevale.

Good evening, Mayor and City Commissioners. So you guys may remember a few years back, or a number of years back now, when we started studying our roadways, right, and we looked at all of our roads, we assigned a condition score, and that's what's given us the tools we need to prioritize using data and plan for how we do that work over the years. So this item takes a fairly similar approach to, but with our city facilities. So we have over 800,000 square feet under rooftop within the city. So this is looking at all of those buildings, trying to assess what condition the various components of each of those buildings are in. So that's HVAC systems and roofs and windows and doors and all the things that we need to plan for when we care for these facilities over a long period of time. builds that condition assessment into a tool called Cartograph that we use for managing all of our city assets and starts to assign life cycles to those and does some modeling to look at what does that replacement schedule look like over the next five years, for instance. How many HVAC systems do we think we'll need to replace in the next five, 10, 15 years so we can just better plan for budgeting at kind of a very high level. So we have kind of searched around to try to find, there's a number of firms that do this work There's a company called Withers Ravnil that we, after looking into a number of products, these guys, I think, do the work that most aligns with what we need right now. So we've worked with them through Sourcewell, which is a purchasing cooperative we have access to, to try to get that lined up. There's a one-time initial cost of $142,000, so that covers project management fees, the facility condition assessment, and then the model development, and then managed services for the first year. So we'll actually run that model for us and kind of help us get up to speed on how to use it. And then after that, if we choose to continue to use that model, it's $19,000 a year to, again, look at all of those city facilities and plan for them. If we choose not to do that, we still retain all of the data and can do some of that modeling ourselves, very similar to what we do with roadway analysis now. That cost is spread over the various cost centers so that the cost per square footage is appropriate for whichever cost center is using those or whichever fund is using those, for instance. So if it's a utilities building, those funds are attributed to utilities. If it's something within Parks and Recreation, they're associated there. So that is about it. I don't want to stand for any questions.

Are we sending a drone out to look?

Nope. We're actually sending people out. They may use some drones.

So no unauthorized images or pictures being taken?

Correct. They may use some drones for roof inspections. That's a tool that they do use.

They only look on our roof.

But they're just looking at our roof, yep. And a lot of this is people work, which is where the value is. It's actually putting somebody out there, putting eyes on the systems, opening them up, assessing what their condition is, saying how much life do we have left in this HVAC system, recording that. Yeah, there's a lot of legwork on this one.

Okay.

All right, item 12H and 12I. Mr. Labbe will present these. These should sound familiar because they both came to you as the CRA board during, I think, your last CRA board meeting. We have the wrong one on the screen. It's not there. There you go.

Yeah, so this, Mayor and Commissioners, this should look familiar to you. This is Bowen Yard West. This is a tax increment financing rebate incentive package for the Bowen Yard West project. It is 50% of the tax increment generated by the project for 10 years. It is also a reimbursement for the construction of 17 public parking spaces at a cost not to exceed $151,200. You heard this as a CRA board on August 24th of 2026 and voted to approve this developer's agreement and staff would recommend approval.

Okay.

Good.

We're good.

I'm going to hit 12 I, please.

This is a design-build services, it's the award of design-build services for the Neighborhood Service Center. March 25th, the city issued RFQ 2625 asking for submittals for design-build firms for the reconstruction redevelopment of the neighborhood. Service Center. Three proposals were received meeting all specifications. The selection committee met on June 2nd to score. After their consideration, they decided to proceed with presentations and interviews on July 20th. After they did that, they immediately convened and the selection committee selected Semco Construction out of Bartow as their top ranked firm. This project has approximately $1.3 million budgeted for its completion, both out of the Florence Villa CRA and two years of CDBG allocation. This award of the design build services was presented to the CRA board on August 24th. They did recommend approval and forwarding to you for your consideration. Staff does recommend approval.

And we have Ms. Bristol here this evening with Neighborhood Service Center who runs an extraordinary program out there.

Any questions on that one?

I want to back up. I skipped over 12G somewhat intentionally so that we can pair up two fire station items together. I'm going to ask, I think Andy Palmer is going to present this. This is adding to the fire station construction some ancillary improvements to the Lake Hartridge Nature Park.

Good evening. I am here. The Lake Hartridge Nature Park opened almost 20 years ago in 2007 and it was actually one of my first projects. The park contains a trail system, stormwater treatment system, boardwalk, lake frontage, boat ramp, picnic pavilions, parking lot, and a playground. As part of our ongoing commitments to keep up with our infrastructure, the playground was actually replaced last year and the new dock was just completed. With fire station number number five nearing completion and actually being located within the park We anticipate an uptick in activity at the park in an effort to continue with our park upgrades Renovations to the park restrooms are being proposed this restroom not only serves the amenities within the park The interior of the restrooms will be renovated with new restroom stalls, plumbing fixtures, flooring, lighting, painting, and other ancillary items such as baby changing stations. Staff is proposing a change order to fire station number five contract with Whitehead Construction to complete this work. The project scope will cost $76,965 and funding is available within the current fiscal year park amenity fund within the construction fund.

So we're basically tagging on to an existing contract, work being done in the park, allows us to expand that, in this case to repair and renovate restrooms, and funding is there for it. Thank you, Andy. Item 12J, now that he's off of his scooter, I invite Chief Dubran.

Put the nickname Sticks.

Well, we're going to change him from Scooter to Skippy because he's got a boot on now.

One foot at a time, right? Good evening, Mayor and Commission. This agenda item has been brought to us by TECO Electric Company. We was requested from the city a blanket utility easement for the placement of a new pad-mounted transformer at Fire Station 5, which is currently under construction at the Lake Hartridge Nature Park. The transformer pad is generally located on the western side of the fire station site adjacent to 20th Street Northwest and will occupy about a 15 foot by 15 foot space for the pad itself. The language contained in this blanket easement will not impede the use of the property for the intended fire station use. Similar easement was granted to TECO at the AdventHealth Fieldhouse and the Chain of Lakes Park. There is no financial impact to the city at this time, and the staff recommends the city commission approve the blanket utility easement and authorize the city manager to sign all documents and take necessary action thereunto.

Any questions?

I do want to recognize Mr. Alex Price, who is here in the audience on behalf of TECO. Okay. For the record, he waved. Thought he had his head down so he wouldn't be recognized. Okay. Our next item is item 12K. So this is... an engagement with Jay Lenora Bressler of Bressler Training LLC to develop and deliver a comprehensive interactive supervisory and leadership training program for staff. It includes about 185 city supervisors, crew leaders, managers, department directors, city managers. It is a multi-week leadership development that focuses on how do we be better supervisors, managers, leaders within the organization. It's intended to promote consistency in our supervisory practices throughout the organization, to strengthen leadership capacity, foster employee engagement and accountability, and support our continued development of an effective, engaging, and high performing workforce. The agreement that we've entered into, and this is a retroactive approval I'm bringing, I've signed off on this agreement after having thoroughly reviewed the curriculum and met with the team that helped put it together. It is a $90,000 training commitment, again touching 185 employees. $40,000 of that will be spent out of fiscal year 26 and $50,000 out of fiscal year 27. So again, those funds are available within our human resources department. We allocate funds for training and development and are excited to see this come to be. This is something we've been pushing for amongst our team to build that consistency in solid leadership and supervisory skills, particularly when we have a number of folks that promote upward. This is some of the best training that they will receive in those roles. So we're asking for a retroactive approval on this one. For item 12L and 12M, I believe Don Maroney is going to present these items. These pertain to matters within the water department.

Good evening, commissioners.

Mayor, city manager. So this is for the purchase of the remote shutoff valve Mach 10 meter. The pilot program started about 2024. The water department's been successful with that program. So we're proposing to purchase 150 of the remote valve shutoff. Cost savings altogether for traditional meter is about $345. The remote shutoff valve is about $662. So that's about a $317 difference. However, it cost the city about $80 a truck roll to send if we have to go turn the water service off and then turn it back on. So that cost savings is about four truck rolls to make up the difference in that cost. So we've been successful with this. The program works through our Neptune 360 software, our iCloud software, so we can remote digitally activate that meter. It's got cybersecurity benefits built into it within the program itself, with limitations as far as authorized users that can activate and send that command to that meter. Altogether, it was about $131,649 investment. So with that, I have any questions? They traditionally look about the same. The only difference is the remote shutoff valve is built within the body. They hold the same warranty. as our traditional meters, which is a 10-year warranty on the battery, a 20-year warranty on the bronze body, and a five-year warranty on the remote shutoff.

So again, this is when you're dealing with delinquent payments or someone, you know, a house sells and they need to get it turned on, the difference between having to send a crew member out to activate that versus being able to do that remotely. Certainly we still have crews available to go and meet with residents when they're having issues with high water bills or excessive flows. We can monitor a little better with these systems, but we also will still have staff available for those situations that require it.

So they are not on all of the meters. We're not purchasing enough to cover all of the meters in our service area. No, sir. We are?

No, sir. So there's about an average of about 500 accounts that we track that have a repeat truck roll. So within that, we're only asking for about 150 of those. This meter would be movable. You can move it with account as that account transfers, so it's not just stuck with one address. It's to prevent the cost of, we don't charge the $80 that it costs the city to roll that truck for that service. We don't put that back on the customer. So this is one way to make up that cost and still not put it back on the customer.

So these would go on, I guess, what would be considered a heavy hitter on late pays? Correct. Is there a certain number or criteria that they would need to hit for you to deploy?

It's one in every three months. If it's every three months that we're having to go back out, then it would qualify to flag on that list.

So for over a year or kind of in that range? And how instantaneous? This is immediate? So I mean, they call up and say, I can pay my bill. Here you go. It's a keystroke to flip it back on or?

So there is a manual tool that personnel could use to operate that valve manually. Other than that, it's set times, and that's at our discretion when we wanted to set those times. So if you made a payment, we could set it in the early morning, afternoon, late evenings, like towards when people start coming home. We can only activate it three times a day. So depending on the time that you pay, we can activate it, and it takes within five minutes after it's been activated to turn that valve back on.

So if they call within business hours, get their payment paid in full, we would get it turned back on within five minutes? Correct, yes, sir.

And if there was any issues with that, we could still roll a truck if we had to and manually activate it. But so far we've been successful. We haven't had any issues with the valve.

And we've done those keystrokes to see if that really works and flip it on in five minutes?

Yes, sir. I've had one that sat on my desk for quite some time where I just would activate it. We even put it on the admin facility, so I figured if we were going to have bad feedback about it, my department director would definitely let me know.

Cool.

All right.

Thank you. Next item is, again, with the Water Department regarding some utility design and construction services for the 8th Street Northwest project.

So this one may look familiar. It was brought to the Commission a few weeks ago and was approved as a Public Works Complete Street project with the roadway improvements and drainage improvements along 8th Street Northwest and Avenue L Northwest. Part of that is the water department has some aging infrastructure, so we're proposing to obtain Kimberley Horn for the design and construction phase services to remove a little less than a quarter mile of AC pipe, install new gravity, sewer laterals, new fire hydrants, water quality improvement looping that system, as well as the upgraded meters on the service lines.

It's kind of a dig once approach. Public works can be in there fixing roads, sidewalks, storm drains. Let's go ahead and fix all the utilities in there at the same time. And that portion of the utility work will be paid out in the water department. Thank you, Donnie. Mr. Hubbard, present on the next two items regarding some grant applications.

Good evening, Mayor and Commissioners. The next two items on the agenda are for grants that are kind of associated with the Heartland Headwaters. We have deadlines every year of September 1, so we're going to be asking for retro approval of these applications that have been submitted. Typically, when we would submit grants for Heartland Headwaters, They would all be accumulated together and submitted as a package to the legislature. This year we're going to take a little bit different approach. PRWC has asked that we apply independently for every member government. So we're actually going to submit two applications this year. The first one that is on the agenda is for the Polar Road water treatment plant or the receiving station where we will receive water from PRWC. In this grant, we're asking for $4.9 million, and that cost is reflective of the increasing of size of the facility, the storage tanks, the pumps, the chemical feed systems, the electrical systems that we needed to make larger to accept that water from PRWC. We're going to be receiving not only water for Winter Haven, but we're going to be receiving water for Lake Alfred and for Auburndale, which we will wheel to them at connection points that are agreed upon. So this first grant will go to FWDEP, and there will be meetings with PRWC and DEP to talk about funding for the receiving stations for all member governments. The second one that we submitted is for additional wells for the Pollard Road Water Treatment Facility. That facility right now currently has two wells. We're going to add two more wells in the future, so we're asking for a 50-50 grant on that for $2 million.

So those grants have been submitted. There's no financial impact with submitting them, but if we're successful in getting them, then we save, in this case, $2 million on the wells and $4.9 million on the AWS receiving facility. So we're hopeful for that.

Happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Good. Final item under consent is a cooperative use agreement between the city and the school district. So this looked very familiar to you because you just approved this back in July, July 13th of this year. We presented to you a cooperative use agreement that spells out the various city facilities that would be made available to the school district, mostly for their athletic programs, and then in turn those school sites that would be available to the city. This was executed on our behalf and transmitted to the superintendent for the school district's execution. Superintendent Hyde reached out to me last week requesting an adjustment or an amendment to it that in the original document that came before you each party has a financial obligation so in the case of the city our obligation was to we committed the Commission had committed to the district a three hundred and fifty thousand dollar contribution towards the renovations at Denison Stadium on the school district side there was a commitment of ten thousand dollars a year for the ten years cooperative use agreement for a total of a hundred thousand dollar payment to the city That original agreement netted those two together and rather than each party making a payment, we would simply make a $250,000 payment to the school district and everybody's all said and done and happy go lucky. Superintendent Hyde has requested that we amend that, that the city go ahead and pay the full $350,000 and that they make their $10,000 annual payments back to the city each year of the term of the agreement. At the end of the day, the amount that is due to each party remains the same. It's just the structure of the payment. So we worked our way through that. None of the facility use changes or anything like that. It's just in how the payments are actually structured for the same cumulative dollar amount. I believe he was taking that to his board yesterday for their approval and authorization. I have not had a chance to connect with him on it. They ratified it. They ratified it yesterday. So it's good to go. So with your consideration of that, it would be good to go on our side.

Did he say why they want to?

No. I think they... I think one of the big concerns is the annual payment upfront, that if for some reason that contract should be terminated at some point and you pay it in advance, then you're out those dollars versus you're paying as you go, was something that he and I discussed. And in reality, Commissioner, I think I would take the exact same position if I was in that boat prepaying for everything with the uncertainty of what hangs in the balance of Amendment 3 and our availability to provide facilities, should that come to fruition, could be problematic there. We had a very good congenial conversation on it and got to the same conclusion. Okay. Resolutions, you'll have two. Eric, are you or Nancy going to present this one?

I'll go ahead and handle it, and if I have anything that I can't answer, Nancy can come up. Resolution R2621 is an amendment to our local housing assistance plan. This was required by Senate Bill 594, which passed in the Florida session this past session. THE BILL COMPELS EACH LOCAL GOVERNMENT THAT RECEIVES SHIP FUNDING TO PROVIDE PERSONS WHO ARE DEPRIVED OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING DUE TO THE CLOSURE OF MOBILE HOME PARKS WITHIN THEIR JURISDICTIONS WITH AN ASSISTANCE PLAN. SO AS OUTLINED IN THE BILL, THE SPECIFIC STRATEGY MUST ADDRESS PERSONS WHO ARE DEPRIVED OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING DUE TO THE CLOSURE OF A MOBILE HOME PARK TO INCLUDE RELOCATION ASSISTANCE AND A PROVISION OF LOT RENTAL ASSISTANCE. SO THIS IS AN AMENDMENT TO OUR specifically providing for that assistance in the form of a $5,000 grant from the SHIP program. As was required, a notice was published in the Winter Haven Sun for the amendment to the LHAP. To date, no comments have been received. This has been preliminarily reviewed, our amendment by Florida Housing, and they have let us know that it looks good, so we're presenting it to you for your approval. Staff does recommend that the City Commission approve this resolution amending our LHAP to provide for this mobile home strategy.

So say that again, the lot rent, this would cover lot rent?

So it only applies to folks that need to relocate, so move their mobile home.

Move their home out of like a park that they got lot rent on. Correct.

So you own your mobile home, but you're renting the lot. Right. And the park owner decides to close the park. This would provide assistance for them to move and some lot rent assistance. Up to $5,000. Up to $5,000.

And the lot rent is limited to six months?

Correct. And it's a one-time award.

Only if they were moving it? If they're relocating, yes. They couldn't just deploy. They got behind on their lot rent five months. They couldn't apply. They get lot rent.

I will defer to Nancy. If someone is simply behind on their lot rent, could we employ that strategy?

I mean, these communities are – I won't say what I was going to say, but I mean, they're not cheap. And there's some that are over $1,000 a month, and they've gotten into these communities, and these communities won't let them move their home out of the park.

Well, this is for the closure of a mobile home park.

Right.

Specifically. So if they got behind, we could go up to $5,000. We wrote that into the...

Okay, so I'm looking at the language specifically. It's on page 11 of the... which is an attachment to your packet. In both cases, it requires the assistance to be because the Park is closed.

It's not so so the why would they want to pay their lot?

So so they would be there are upfront costs associated with you know, like when you Rent an apartment There are upfront costs you incur so you could provide some assistance in those in those costs Do we have a lot of parks that are closing or we have had one closed in the last? 10 years that I've been here and it was up here on 17 and where they started to construct an assisted living facility and then abandoned the project.

And this is only for in the event of a park closing? Yes. So I guess I'm just, is it really needed?

I don't anticipate that we will have much use of this specific strategy.

And would this prevent us to use the funds? I mean, could these funds go elsewhere? Yes. Yes.

If we don't have anybody apply for this specific strategy, we would use them for down payment assistance, home rehab, the things that we always do.

We don't have to fund the strategy. We just have to have the strategy in our plan. Gotcha.

Okay.

By, yeah, by law.

Okay. This is for the rental of another space, is that correct?

Pardon?

This is for the rental of another space if they had found another place? Yes. What about the movement itself?

Yes, and the relocation. That's part of it as well, yes.

Okay, because that's very expensive as well. Yes. How much is allocated for that?

Well, it's up to... Again, a $5,000 grant, up to $5,000.

So the grant is just whatever it costs. Got you.

I think you've got to have a placeholder to satisfy the federal government.

State. State government.

State. State, excuse me. Same difference these days. Okay.

Okay, Eric will present 2622. We'll note that this is an item that pertains to an easement involving First Missionary Baptist Church, so I believe we would have to have two members abstain from voting on this due to affiliation with the controlling entity. Sure.

yes sir back in nineteen fifty eight the city was granted a forty-foot wide easement It is a perpetual easement for right-of-way to construct and maintain underground works or utilities of a municipal or public nature. Second Street actually runs through this easement. A portion of Second Street Northwest runs through this easement. You can see it depicted on your screen there. First Missionary Baptist Church is undergoing a reconstruction of their facilities. They actually own the land. They granted the easement to the city. The church is requesting that the city vacate and release a 558 square foot section of the western part of that easement to allow for the construction of a new fellowship hall and associated loading zones. You can see it depicted there in the hash. That is the section to be vacated. As you can see, it was previously used for parking, so the use doesn't substantially change. It will be a pick up and drop off type area at the new proposed fellowship hall, but this allows them to put the canopy over the drive. aisle within that that easement area so as part of the easement vacation process the city has contacted all the local utility companies also city engineering and utility departments we received no objection letters as part of that process and so staff does recommend that city commission approve resolution r2622

Do we have any utilities?

We've already gone through all the utilities and issued those notices, and there's no conflicts or issues with that. This is kind of interesting. There's only – I'm aware of two roads that exist like this where they're – They're public roads, but they don't exist within public rights of way. It's in an easement that was granted by another entity. So this is a pretty unusual type of situation to come before you all. Nothing controversial with it. It's just a little unusual. You don't usually see roads that don't exist within a dedicated public right of way. Okay.

Any questions?

I think we're good. And Mr. Labbe will present on the next item.

Ordinance 2620, this is a request by AdventHealth Polk North Inc. to amend PUD Ordinance 02447. AdventHealth has petitioned to amend Planning and Development 02447 to address conditions related to the hospital building height and parking requirements for the property. This is north of Cypress Gardens Boulevard. It is consistent with the comprehensive plan. Staff's review of the request indicates that the proposed increase in maximum building height is limited to a defined area within the interior of the property, which provides increased setbacks from the adjacent residential development to the north across River Lake. The proposed increase in building height is consistent with plan unit development zoning and height allowances established for other hospitals within the city and the unique parking demands associated with hospital uses eliminating the requirement to utilize pervious hard surface for parking areas when the total number of parking spaces exceed 110 percent of the minimum required would be appropriate as the additional spaces are in test anticipated to be consistently Utilize so specifically what all that means is they want to amend the maximum height to a maximum of 100 feet and we have a requirement in our code that says if you're providing more than 110 percent of of the required parking for your site, you have to provide pervious parking. So that would mean pavers or gravel or something of that nature that would allow the stormwater to permeate. Being that this is a hospital, that provision isn't necessarily appropriate because one, they're likely to go to structured parking in the future, which you can't do pervious structured parking. And two, the clientele, A lot of folks are disabled. A lot of folks are in wheelchairs and walkers. You wouldn't necessarily want them walking or trying to traverse pavers or some sort of pervious-type surface. This was heard by the Planning Commission. They unanimously recommended approval, and staff would recommend approval as well. Thank you.

Any questions on that one?

I don't think so, no.

And the last item is an environmental cooperation agreement that is specific to the advancement of the downtown parking garage number two, what I refer to as the south garage, that is the P3 project. And Mr. Carnevale and Mr. Murphy and his team have worked diligently on this, so I'm going to ask Mr. Carnevale to present this.

So you guys will recall in May of 2026, we brought forward a comprehensive agreement with 610 LLC and Urban Action LLC that the city commission approved. That was for the permanent construction sale and purchase of a new 292 space parking facility for public use as a city of Winter Haven capital asset. At that same time, we also brought back a task order with Kimley Horn to serve as the city's owner representative and technical advisor in that process. In the comprehensive agreement, we contemplated as a condition of closing that the city put together what's called a cooperation agreement, and that's specifically to address a historic underground fuel tank that was on this site, had some soil contamination with it, and is a part of the FDEP's program to remediate that. So that cooperation agreement, the comprehensive agreement kind of structures the whole relationship. The cooperation agreement speaks pretty specifically to how we navigate that piece of it. So we've worked very closely with 610 and Urban Action to develop this cooperation agreement. And the main points of that are that Urban Action 610 shall at their sole cost and expense perform or cause performance of all site rehabilitation activities necessary to gain that FDEP closure. Closure is what FDEP calls it when they've said everything is handled on this site appropriately and we're kind of good. So urban action shall be responsible for regulatory compliance and all construction coordination as well as pursuing that FDEP closure. It grants access licenses for urban action in the city and appropriate parties to perform any of the necessary work on site given proper notice. So that would be things like on-site monitoring, any of the actual remediation work. a number of activities that have to happen over the course of that process. The city shall cooperate reasonably with Urban Action's compliance and not knowingly interfere with any of the institutional engineering controls without first giving written consent. One of the things you do to remediate a site is you put in place a variety of controls. So an institutional control in this instance would be covering that site in concrete with a parking garage. And so making sure that that is in place is one of the things that needs to continue to happen. So we will coordinate on that. And then specify some specific insurance requirements for the contractors performing that work. And then outlines the recorded instruments that are necessary to kind of process that final transaction. There is no direct financial impact the city and we are seeking City Commission staff recommends City Commission approval enough City Attorney has anything he wants to add.

Yeah, the only thing I would just want to point out is Attached to the agreement the environmental cooperation agreement is a proposed contingency soil management plan that has been reviewed by both our consultant Kim Lee horn and CES and who is acting as consultant for Urban Action and 610 and they have been CES has been interfacing I understand with the FDEP previously and will continue to do so. We wanted to be very clear that the contingent soil management plan that is utilized by Urban Action and 610 and its consultant CES via their contractor for this project is their means, method, and manner and what have you so that our agreement, our entering into this agreement does not mean that the city necessarily condones or even adopts those procedures. That's for them to do. Ultimately, we wanted to make sure that we structured this so that any costs that would arise out of CLOSURE, AS THE DEPUTY CITY MANAGER HAS NOTED, VIA THE FDEP PROCESS WOULD BE BORN BY THE PRIVATE PARTIES. AND THIS HAS ALREADY BEEN ASSIGNED A SITE OR A SITE, FDEP SITE NUMBER. AND AS THE DEPUTY CITY MANAGER NOTED, THERE IS, IT WAS PETROLEUM CONTAMINATION BASED ON UNDERGROUND TANKS, FORMER GAS STATION. And there is a program in the state of Florida that is presently funded by the state legislature that covers the costs that are associated with remediation that is required in order to remediate the contamination. there is some underground contamination that would plume groundwater based on the materials, metals, and some of the chemicals that would have escaped when they had the underground tanks. So we want to make sure that we have identified clearly that is the city's goal that you all as the private parties are responsible for this. We will facilitate and assist where and when we can, but ultimately there will be some, probably a declaration of covenants and restrictions, institutional controls that would be recorded in the public records, that would be reflected, that would comport with FDEP requirements. You know, as the deputy city manager noted, the obvious use of this property is as a garage. a concrete structure that will be completely impervious. So there will be no use of any water or dropping of wells or anything along those lines. So this is a pretty good fix, if you will, for the remediation that would be required, as we think. And as Kimley Horne has noted, there may be some things that have to be done during the construction When soils are excavated for footers, for example, they might have to dig a little lower for footers for the elevator. They might have to clear some soils. Those things are all going to need to be coordinated by their consultant. We just want to make sure that we're not saying that we necessarily agree with your contingent soil management plan. It's there and ultimately, you know, there may be some things that have to be done during the construction process. For example, prior to them putting the second floor on, they might have to dig something and that's conceivable. But that's going to be all at the expense of the private parties. So this was something that we wanted to make sure that we negotiated and got approved during our due diligence period, which if I understand it correctly is September 22nd. So we wanted this to be in place. It has to be in place prior to closing. We don't anticipate closing on this. That means our payment of the money and their conveyance of title to us until the garage is completed. until it's got a certificate of completion or occupancy or its functional equivalent. And so, you know, that's down the road a little bit. You may have noticed that they've put a fence, chain link fence around the site. I think that's in anticipation of this. This is just one of those pieces. They've applied for permits during this 180-day period. I think, anyway, this is just a part of this process. And we will be back with more things probably not until after the garage is done. Hopefully there won't be any increases in the cost. We don't anticipate that to be the case. But this is ensuring that whatever costs are associated with the remediation for the contamination there, that's going to rely on the private parties.

so out of an abundance of caution i'll probably abstain from voting on this particular item just a good idea you know probably just safer to do that i have a question i mean i'm not a structural engineer so there's tanks under there right now or there's no so there are no tanks now everything there were everything okay i thought they left them and sealed them up okay

You just deal with what was there, and they were removed sometime in the 60s, so that's what you're dealing with. This project, although the scale is significantly different, is not too different in terms of an institutional control from what's happening at Target. Targets on the old Vigoro site had tons of contamination, well, a significant amount of contamination. I can't measure it, but it's, you know, how do you control that? You make it impervious. You cap in place is the language you'll hear. So parking lots. buildings, foundations. So that's exactly what happens here because that prevents rainwater, surface water from penetrating down through and causing any plume to move.

Pushing anything lower, essentially. If it's sealed, then whatever's there is just going to stay there. Correct.

The indications are that the depth at which that contamination was noted at the time, that it was identified as somewhere below 11 feet. We're not, the project doesn't go anywhere near that depth. And they have done all the steps along the way. There's been monitoring wells and the like on this property for a number of years. So they are working through the process to have it designated as closed and this will, this language that's in the cooperation agreement continues their efforts to do that and ensures that those are done so that when we receive the project it is a closed site. So this is a risk management approach that is very solid. And they've done more, as I saw today, beyond fencing. I think that they've begun removing some of the trees that would be within the footprint of the actual building. Okay. Okay. So that is your agenda for Monday. Fortunately, a lot of these items are in consent. I think this is one of the largest agendas that this commission, other than Commissioner Birdsong from days of old, we've not had one this large in quite some time. And there are some significant items in terms of the budget, the millage, the cooperation agreement as well. We do have a quick update for you this evening on our economic sustainability pillar. This evening, again, just to reiterate, this is about fostering innovation to ensure enduring success. A lot of the things that people think of as economic sustainability are not necessarily things that we can control. We can't control inflation. We can't control the cost of gas, the cost of groceries, those things that so often impact overall economics. But what we wanted to do tonight was give you an update on our procurement platform. We presented this to you a few months back and are having great success with that. Some information on housing diversification, commercial development within our community. You know, what does the future hold as far as vacant land and what's available still out there? So Bethany Owen, our procurement manager extraordinaire, I will hand off to you, ma'am.

thank you city manager good evening mayor commissioners i am pleased to be here this evening to provide you with a procurement platform update if you will recall when we last spoke in april i gave you an overview of that new procurement platform and you asked at that time if i would come back in about six months or so and give you an update on a couple of topics One of those topics, how are things going? The second, local versus non-local subscribers to the platform. And the third, of our awarded bids on the new platform, what percent were to local firms? So looking at the first question, how are things going? I'm happy to report they're going very well, both internally and externally. Users of the system are continuing to give us very positive feedback about the ease of use of the system. And our internal staff are having great success in creating their own solicitations that meet their specific needs. So very fortunate there. Everyone likes it. Topic number two, local versus non-local subscribers. Now there I don't have a lot of great information to provide unfortunately. I found in my research that OpenGov does not require that their subscribers input any kind of location information. So that's not a required field and so consequently the available data doesn't really provide us any kind of an accurate window to see how successful we are in obtaining those and getting, reaching those local subscribers. In my conversations with open gov on the topic they have I've been able to stress to them the importance of that information to entities such as ourselves So they have assured me that they thought it was a really good idea And so hopefully we'll be seeing something come back from them very soon So like a future update to that platform I am excited to say though that we have actually been able to issue over 30,000 invites out to local suppliers and distance suppliers as well. And in those over 30,000, we have actually received about 6,000 acceptances and subscriptions. So that is going to be very, very helpful. Topic number three, the award percent to the local suppliers. So if you were to, considering just those bids that we have put out on OpenGov, which would be probably the last half of the fiscal year, manual calculations tell me that we have awarded 13.8% to local suppliers. Now, this number is very strictly interpreted to just include those suppliers that are inside the Winter Haven service limits. There are a number of suppliers that I have not included in this number that are in the Bartow area, Lakeland. We've had Eagle Lake, Lake Wales. They're not in that number. but they definitely have an effect on the local economy. They have employees that live in the area as well. The number also includes It doesn't include those things that we do on a continuing contract basis, such as task orders to our engineering contracts and some other things like that. So you won't see those things, but they are occurring as well. This is strictly bids within the OpenGov platform. inside the winter haven city limits um also some of the things that really aren't part of this and don't show in this some of our niche market solicitations that go out we they're so specialized and we may not have someone local to take care of our railroad crossings take care of our aviation fuel needs things like that so that number is artificially low it it really is higher than that and so if you were to consider fiscal year twenty twenty six in its entirety looking at all of the solicitations that we've issued both on the old platform and the new platform as well we have issued at least fourteen million dollars worth of projects with over 2 million that have actually been awarded to local providers. This also, as stated before, doesn't include a lot of the task orders and things. And additionally, it doesn't show you a true number because there are many solicitations we have already awarded, but we're in the negotiation phase. So it's hard to say what the final dollar figure will be, but this is just looking at a good estimate of what we have already awarded. On a final topic, that was not something that i was asked to report on but i thought was of interest to you potentially over the last seven years as you can see here on this slide uh... we've been issuing solicitations digitally and this slide will show you that in teal those are the number of solicitations we've actually put out year by year and the aqua are the number of bid responses we've received you can see we've been fairly steady we're ticking downward a little bit on the number of solicitations issued that's for a variety of reasons using more cooperatives and that sort of thing but the number of bid responses are going up so looking at that and thinking about that if you consider what our average number of bid responses has been we have gone from a low in 2020 of 1.8 average bid responses to a current five point five and that's uh... very good increase it is an average so you have to consider that we have on some solicitations no responses it doesn't happen very often but they they do happen all the way up to twenty seven responses the other day thirty two responses to our professional services contract this again is average. It's not what we see on a day-to-day basis. This is what I had for you. I hope that you found it informative. I will be available for questions, but for now I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Eric.

Thank you. So I'm going to talk a little bit about what we're seeing in the residential housing market as well as what we're seeing come out of the ground on the commercial side and some of the trends we're seeing and where we're kind of diversifying ourselves in the local economy. What you see before you is the number of dwelling units in our market in the city of Winter Haven from 2020 to 2026. It probably does not surprise you at all that we've gone from just under 23,000 to almost 29,000 residential dwelling units in a five and a half year period of time. We've put a lot of units on the ground, but what might be a little more interesting is you can see that in terms of manufactured housing and why I think we're not necessarily going to use that LHAP strategy a whole lot in the City of Winter Haven is we've remained absolutely flat in terms of the number of mobile home or manufactured home units that we have in the marketplace. We simply don't have any vacant mobile home lots really that are available in the City of Winter Haven. On the multifamily side, you can see there in 2023 we ticked up when we put about 1,500 new units into the marketplace, and we do continue to issue a few more multifamily permits over the years. And the single family dwelling units remain strong, although you can see on the number of permits issued. So the previous slide was the number of units. in our marketplace this slide is the number of permits that we've issued year over year since 2020. you can see single family is has leveled off you know came down from 20 to 22 and then it kind of leveled off and of course 26 is not a full calendar year reporting we're about halfway through the year or so so that will go up a little bit but i think it will remain relatively flat Multifamily, again, that spike in 2023. We did issue a few more in 24 and 25. The townhomes and duplexes, though, you can see them ticking up over the last two years. uh... we have issued a number of permits for new townhome projects and duplexes as well uh... in our marketplace so we're sort of starting to hit that missing middle uh... we've been trying to concentrate over the years on getting some more rentals into the market we heard from the constituents that Back in 2020 and 2021, rent prices were going crazy and there was just nowhere for them to go. And so I think we're making a dent in the multifamily and the missing middle, the townhomes and duplexes and triplexes and small apartment complexes in our marketplace. And I've lost a slide that has disappeared. The slide that you don't see is relative to commercial. I don't know if you have it on there real quick. It's that one. Yeah, it's an aerial. Just a quick overview of some of the big commercial projects that are happening in our community. And you're well aware of all of these, but I wanted to point them out, you know, mainly because it is a reflection of what has happened in the residential, you know, marketplace. When you have an influx of folks coming into your community, the commercial, the retailers, the non-residential uses, they respond. And so we have seen two new publics that's come out of the ground this past year. Advent Health is moving forward. You just heard an amendment to their PUD that if approved on Tuesday, will help them to proceed with their project to develop a new hospital here in town. Another motel, the Spring Hill Suites Marriott, has approved plans and will be under construction soon, I'm told, just next to the Lake Dexter Apartments there, next to the other Marriott Hotel on Cypress Gardens Boulevard. Of course, you're well aware of South State and their Regional Operations Center, locating to the heart of our downtown, which is a huge project for the city of Winter Haven. We're all aware of Target, Super Target, under construction. They are projecting to be open. They hope by the end of this calendar year. And what everybody is wondering, what's going into the old Macy's, it is a recreational slash retail slash food and beverage facility. They will have indoor pickleball courts. They will have food and beverage establishments and retail spots as well, so you can have lunch, have a beverage, buy a t-shirt, and play pickleball to all your heart's desire in that location. I suspect that we will continue to trend as the years move forward into more and more, we'll see more and more commercial permits. issued in the city of Winter Haven. And I think that we will trend a lot more residential permits, or not residential permits, I'm sorry, redevelopment permits. And here's why I think we'll see a lot more redevelopment in the city of Winter Haven. We have a total of 751 vacant parcels in the city of Winter Haven. So of the 27,053 parcels that I mentioned earlier, about 750 of them are vacant. That computes to a total of about 3,900 acres of vacant land in the city of Winter Haven. However, about 900 or so of that has an industrial future land use. So we won't see homes in a lot of those properties. I think we will see some home development, sure, in the coming years. But as that greenfield development, those greenfield parcels get developed in the next few years, we'll see a lot more redevelopment. The city staff, planning staff, continues to work to identify appropriate commercial locations to accommodate the residential growth that has happened in the last, call it 10 years. So we have about an 18% vacant land left in the city of Winter Haven. So as that number continues to dwindle down, we will see a lot more of our older legacy properties begin to be repurposed in the city of Winter Haven and our economic development strategies will start to shift as well. So just to wrap it up, we heard a procurement update from Bethany, and we spoke a little bit, presented on the housing diversification that we've been seeing over the last couple of years, some major commercial developments, and what we have left as far as vacant land in the city of Winter Haven and where we think we're going. Stand for any questions you may have.

Who is that?

I don't know the name off the top of my head, but I can find that out for you. Is it local? No, it is an LLC. It's a company that purchased that plaza out of auction about a year or a year and a half ago.

They purchased the whole?

Not the Lowe's. The Lowe's was not part of it. Yes, but everything on that side. Yes, sir.

Total, and they're using all that space in there?

Yes, sir. Yeah, as they recall, there are about six or seven new retail bays that are going to be along the front. So if you've driven by there, you see they've kind of knocked out that front wall, so there will be retail spots along the frontage, and then the pickleball and additional retail and food and beverage will be on the inside.

What's the estimated completion date on that?

I do not have one for you on that, but I can try to find one.

Eric, did you say Target, I believe their original intent was to be operational going into the holiday shopping season. Is that still on track? Do you know?

To my understanding, that's still on track. They are working diligently, as you may have seen, in the FDOT right away. We will see those impacts over the next couple weeks. There will be some lane closures along 17. Immediately after that, they will begin work on Avenue R, all in preparation to be ready by holiday season to help.

And that's an important one, I think, for you all to be aware of. Avenue R is going to be improved. We worked with the county on that and the developer. So you'll see another impact road closure notice coming out, probably shutting down Avenue R completely for a short period of time while they do those improvements, still allowing access to the businesses in there that need it. But watch for that as being the next step. road closure associated with that target project.

That will be ingress and egress for that?

I think they'll have an access off of Avenue R. They do. I don't know if it will be their primary. Obviously, the primary, they're on 17. And, Eric, that's to be signalized, I believe.

It will be a signalized intersection on 17. But they do have an access on Avenue R.

so question on the um procurement process sorry i apologize you knew it was coming right yeah um so yeah that that that location number is really like throwing me off like um so that's concerning i get what you're saying like it doesn't necessarily account for surrounding municipality areas and things like that that these contractors may be coming out of is there no way to add another bar to say you know polk county owned business or can we extrapolate that out to show like direct city limits of winter haven business maybe county and and within and then outside of

Absolutely. Yeah, sure. I can figure that out.

Be good to see that number. Cause I know, you know, if we haven't pulled the commission recently on this, but when I first came on to the commission, one big push was to continue to be sure that we're utilizing local contractors as much as we, we possibly can. And some, you know, may, may not exist for, for the local area. And I get that, but seeing that bar way out of whack like that concerns me. So if I can get a little bit more information on, you know, from Polk County within where those contractors were coming from.

And we can provide some additional context there. I think you hit it on the head that a lot of the things that we put out to bid are really unique. We were looking at some earlier today. Resurfacing of clay tennis courts, right? That's kind of unique expertise.

Probably not going to have anybody in Winter Haven. Right. Or in Polk County. Or in Polk County.

Aviation fuel is another one. Elevators can be very specific. It may not have within the city limits. So we can definitely work on putting that together. But I think the other thing to keep in mind, too, is that that is a count of everything that we put out to bid. So if we put body armor out to bid, which, again, there may not be a vendor for within city limits, that's counted as one, whereas a $2.5 million construction project that's being done by Tucker construction is one also, right? So it's kind of hard. That's why we try to put the dollar value in there. Let's go ahead and add some context.

And in our process in our system, we still give extra credit to those or we don't.

Let me clarify on that. We don't give extra credit. uh... to a locally owned business that uh... is bidding on a project there there can be within requests for qualifications your art these points that speak to ability to impact economy in your location can speak to that now if you're dealing with an f doti project were federally funded project You can't do that. We do have provisions within our procurement manual that if I am not from the area and I bid on a project and you are the second lowest bidder and within so many percent of my bid, we can extend to you an opportunity to match my bid and award to you as the local person. Again, there are certain times when we can't do that.

Right, and it's within certain percents. Based upon dollar value. Right, it's based upon dollar value and the percent of, and you have to match the price.

Local preference is a very touchy thing when you're dealing with state and federal dollars.

And grants.

And grants. The other thing I want to point out, and this is, you know, it always is kind of confusing, because years ago we used to provide a report that of all the, purchases we made, how many were in Winter Haven, how many were in Polk County, how many were in Florida, how many were outside of Florida. And MJ's right. You may have one that's within Winter Haven for two and a half million dollars. The dollar values can change. What's the project you're doing? We just awarded a contract with Wharton Smith for a project that's going to be a few hundred million dollars at the end of the day. They're not a Winter Haven-based company. They're not a Polk County-based company. They are a major national entity that specializes in that. We buy fuel. Buy a lot of fuel. That's a contract bid. It's not coming out of Polk County. We buy chemicals for all of our water treatment plants and wastewater treatment operations. It's not coming out of Polk County. So part of the challenge you run into is does that entity exist locally? most of the things that we do a vast majority of the things that we do we're buying guns for the police department we're buying hoses for the fire department we're buying a fire truck you're not getting it in polk county it just doesn't exist so our focus i mean we recognize that one of the things that we've been working with bethany and her team on how do we make the local people aware of what we are doing that they can compete on, making it easier for procurement processes, educating them on this is what you're going to need because we want where there is an opportunity to use a local vendor for them to have full knowledge of the opportunity and for them to go after it. But at the end of the day, is any city likely to be spending the vast majority of their solicitation awards on purely local folks? I highly doubt that exists anywhere in this country because the diversity of what you're buying, no city is going to have all of those things. Still want to do as much business as we can locally because those dollars are going to stay local.

Yeah, and that's my biggest, I totally get that, you know, not everything's going to be local because it's just not possible. But I just want to be sure that we're, and I get all the overlays and I get all that, but as long as we're doing everything we can to help our dollar stay local and continue to be recycled here rather than going out of the area. And I'm trying to remember, I was having a conversation yesterday Just the other day, I don't remember the project or what it was, but it was like they're out of Miami and they're coming here. Essentially, you're only getting three days of work out of them because they're traveling here, they're working for three days, and then they're going home. And so it's extending the life of the project out tremendously because you're only getting three days of work done a week because of traveling back and forth i'll try to remember that what project that was and where that was at but um but just it's just Important to me and I'm pleased if if anybody objects speak up, but I just want to make sure that we're giving as much business as possible to our local Contractors are and we got plenty of contractors around Winter Haven and Polk County So but there's other lines of business and just making sure that those opportunities are out there for everyone to partake in And hopefully as much of that stays local as possible

I'm happy to report that when we did Ridge League of Cities last week, your caterer was right here in Winter Haven. Your musical entertainment was right here in Winter Haven. The bar service was right here in Winter Haven.

And not one dollar of taxpayer money. Not one dollar of taxpayer dollars.

But all those dollars did go back into local employees to spend again locally.

And if I could add with regard to... the things that were not factored into those numbers, the continuing contracts. If you stop and consider the fact that we have got a professional services contract, RFQ 20-01, That solicitation has about 25 vendors on it, and they are Pannoni, who's in town. I'm trying to think of some of the others.

Carter K. Engineering, but also firms like Kimley Horn, who, even though they're a nationally owned company, so on our data, it probably shows up as a nationally owned company. They employ quite a few people in Polk County who... many of which were at the League of Cities, as you mentioned the other night, is a good example. I think another really good example, it's not a local firm, but tonight you guys looked at a contract with Simcoe. They're out of Bartow, but I know some of the folks on that team. I know their kids play ball in town. They're participating in Boy Scout troops locally. These are people that are in our community, even though their business is not local, within city limits.

and they're also on the general contractor solicitation. So they're out of BARTO, but oftentimes we use them without going out to bid. So those are some of the things that that number is missing are the things that we have on continuing contract. You're doing a design, services tonight was on there with one of ours that's on the engineering contract, Kimberly Horn, I believe. You've got the Neighborhood Service Center with SEMCO. You've got the GC contract with SEMCO. There's any number of things that we do via piggybacks, via cooperatives that we repeatedly go back to but they don't go through the solicitation process so they don't factor into these numbers so you don't see those kind of things but they are going on and you know oftentimes i believe that we're spending more money on those things than we are on the stuff that's coming via the opengov platform And when it comes to the local vendors, what I'm seeing in the tours that I'm doing in meeting with the local firms and talking to them about how they can be successful and how they can bid with us, many of those are small mom and pops. They all are. And many of them have been custodial contracts. And we do issue solicitations for those. But those solicitations run $5,000 to $10,000. maybe $20,000 a year for cleaning of some of our office facilities. So those are small dollar. They're not going to affect that total number as much as we'd hope. But we definitely meet with them, and I go out and speak annually at the RP Funding Center at that small business convention, the one that the Polk County holds. I'm out there at least twice a year doing those things, not to mention chamber webinars and things like that. So we are definitely reaching out to them.

Good discussion. Thank you.

Thank you.

Commissioners, anything else for this evening?

I have one final thing for you all. Yes, sir. I want to remind you of two events that are happening this week. Thursday, tomorrow evening is Ladies' Night downtown. Gentlemen, you can still attend. I think I'm invited tonight. But that's a Main Street event. And then Friday is our Honoring Our Heroes event. This is the 25th year anniversary remembrance of the 9-11 attacks. So we will have that event, as we do each year, on the north end of South Central Park. with the memorial walk, the honor walk that will take place at 5.30, and then the program to follow thereafter. So we hope that you all will join us. Please share that with friends and family. Being the 25-year memorial of that is quite significant.

Thank you.

Thank you. All right, with nothing else, we'll adjourn.